Here's an interesting article from smartplanet.com demonstrating an innovative use of distance learning technology. Several very large companies (Nokia, Sony, Philips, Rolls-Royce) are having their interns and management candidates participate in online business scenario "tournaments" as part of their training. Participants compete against one another to determine how their managerial decisions would affect the outcome of their fictional organization.
Project-based learning is one of the new educational buzzwords floating around and this would certainly fall into this category. Providing students with authentic learning opportunities seems to foster greater participation and success. Re-working our educational system to eliminate worksheets and scantron forms and replace them with projects and real-life application is going to take a lot of work! Is project-based learning a fad or something that's here to stay?
